| The traditional study of metaphor can be traced back to Aristotle,who defined it as a kind of rhetoric.In 1980 s,Lakoff and Johnson published Metaphors We Live By,which is the representative of the cognitive study of metaphor and subverted the traditional view of metaphor.They put forward the conceptual metaphor theory,which aims to explain the metaphorical mapping between the cognitive domain and insists that metaphor is not only the problem of language or words,on the contrary,people’s thinking process is metaphorical,namely human’s conceptual system is based on metaphor.Since then,the study of conceptual metaphor has sprung up in various fields,however,the study on sports news from cognitive perspective is insufficient.Based on this,this thesis carries out the cognitive analysis of metaphors in English ball sports news that the author selected from ESPN on the basis of Lakoff and Johnson’s conceptual metaphor theory.This paper aims to find out the typical conceptual metaphors in English ball sports news,and discuss the cognitive process of these conceptual metaphors in English ball sports news.The author found that conceptual metaphors are ubiquitous in English ball sports news.15 types of conceptual metaphors are identified in these sports news,which include WAR,JOURNEY,PERFORMANCE,PLANT,PERSON,ANIMAL,BUILDING,CONTAINER,MONEY,BUSINISS,DISEASE,VEHICLE,NATURE,FOOD and UP-DOWM.These conceptual metaphors can be classified into 9 kinds of structural metaphor,5 kinds of ontological metaphor and 1 kind of orientatinal metaphor.It is found that there are distinct differences in the quantity of these conceptual metaphors.For example,WAR metaphor takes up the biggest proportion and JOURNEY metaphor takes the second.The analysis of the mapping process from source domain to target domain of these conceptual metaphors helps people better understand metaphors in English ball sports news from cognitive perspective. |
